The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry - Michael Kelly - (Traditional - Child Ballad

Описание: A little over a month ago, I recorded 'The Grey Selkie', which is an adaptation by Maz O'Connor of a traditional song from Orkney (Child ballad #113). At the request of one of my patrons, I've recorded here a more traditional version of the song.

In it, while nursing a baby, a woman laments that she doesn't know the identity or homeland of the child's father. A man comes to her, explaining that he is a selkie, and father to the boy, offering her a purse of gold in payment for her nursing. He says that he will take the child away with him to the sea, but that he has forseen that the woman's future husband will kill both the selkie and his son the first time he goes hunting, believing them to be seals.

Both songs tell the same general story, though this traditional version strikes me as a little less romantic than Maz O'Connor's adaptation. The selkies of legend are shapeshifters, who live at sea in the form of seals, but shed their sealskins to walk as men on land. While the selkies in many more modern songs are female, this song stems from the older legends and stories, in which most selkies written about are male. It's also noteworthy that almost all stories that feature selkies in them have tragic endings.

The place mentioned in the song (and pictured in the thumbnail), Sule Skerry, is a very remote skerry (a tiny island or reef, generally too small for human habitation) that lies about 60km west of the mainland of the Orkney Isles of Northern Scotland. The skerry is less than 1km long, treeless, and only 12 metres above sea level at its highest point. Its main features are a single lighthouse (which was Great Brittain's most remote manned lighthouse up until it became automated in the 1980's), some small stone cairns, and thousands of puffins and gannets (during their breeding season).

The guitar for this recording was done in CGCFGC tuning (DADGAD, tuned down 1 full step).

Meaning of some of the Scots dialect words:
nourris = a woman who is employed to suckle a small child - a nurse
ba lilly wean = howl lovely child
bed fit = foot of the bed
grumly = troubled
strand - beach or shore

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"THE GREAT SELKIE OF SULE SKERRY" - Traditional - Child ballad #113

An earthly nourris sits and sings,
And aye she sings, "Ba lilly wean,
Little ken I my bairn's father,
Far less the land that he bides in."

Then up come he to her bed fit,
And a grumly guest I'm sure was he,
Saying "Here am I, thy bairn's father,
Although I may not comely be."

I am a man upon the land,
I am a selkie in the sea,
And when I'm far frae every strand,
My home it is in Sule Skerry."

Then he has taken a purse of gold,
And he has laid it down upon her knee,
Saying, "give to me, my little young son,
And take thee up thy nouris fee.

It shall come to pass on a summer's day,
When the sun shines bright on every stone,
That I shall take my wee young son,
And teach him to swim all in the foam.

And thou shalt marry a proud gunner,
And a fine young man I'm sure he'll be,
And the very first shot that e're he shoots,
he'll kill both my wee young son and me."